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 favourite dreams of childhood, and decked them in all the vivid colours of fancy, feels disappointed and disgusted, though it scarce knows why, to find the reality so different from the image it had pictured to itself.

Such were the feelings of Edric as he entered the grand hall of this residence of his ancestors, and gazed upon the well-remembered faces of the crowd of servants assembled to meet him. At the head of these was Davis; his tall thin figure waving to and fro, and his long thin white hair floating upon his shoulders; and the more spruce and gallant aspects of Abelard and his devoted Eloisa, the late Mrs. Russell, who had blest him with the possession of her fair hand a few days before, and now stood blushing and simpering, with all the affected modesty of a bride of sixty, to receive the congratulations of those around her.

"Welcome! welcome, my dear Edric!" cried Dr. Entwerfen, rushing down-stairs to meet them, his sleeves tucked up, and his wig thrown back, in a very experimental-philosophic manner; "rejoice with me too, for I have recovered my balloon! My darling caoutchouc bottle of